Imig Music Building
Office N1B69
Director Leigh Holman has found success balancing her professional stage directing and academic career in the United States and abroad.
Her most recent professional engagement was with Pafos Aphrodite Festival in Pafos, Cyprus where she received heralded reviews for her direction of Mozart’s Die Entfuhrung aus Serail. She has made debuts at the Piccolo Festival Friuli Venezia Giulia (Rossini’s, La cambiale di matrimonio) in Northern Italy, Florida Grand Opera, Opéra de Montréal (Nabucco), and Opera Futura in Verona, Italy. At CU each academic year, Holman stage directs three mainstage operas, teaches opera workshop classes and directs a scenes program each December. She celebrates her 10th academic year as Opera Director at CU and previously was Director of Education and the Young Artist Program at Opera Colorado. As Chair of the Voice Area, she Founded the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Opera Program.
Equally suited to new and rare works as she is to traditional compositions for the stage, she has produced and directed workshops of operas in association with composers and librettists such as Tom Cipullo, Jake Heggie, Gene Scheer, Mark Adamo, Mark Campbell, Libby Larsen, Herschel Garfein, Lori Laitman, Robert Aldridge, Daniel Kellogg, Colm Toibin, Dave Mason and Kirke Mechem. As the founder of CU NOW, University of Colorado Boulder’s New Opera Workshop, she continues to passionately promote the creation, collaboration and production of new American works.
She has degrees from the Eastman School of Music, the University of Southern California and CU Boulder.